In order to rule out the possibility that the protective action might be indirect, i. e., not attributable to mere absorption of the toxic rays, and also to permit the employment of toxic acids the following modified procedure was employed:

In a quartz beaker with a diameter of 32 mm. 2 c.c. of the given acid were placed, this amount being just sufficient to completely cover the bottom of the beaker. A square piece of cardboard was placed on the Syracuse dish containing the paramecium suspension. The quartz beaker was then placed over a circular opening in the cardboard, having a diameter of 25 mm. By this means the organisms were shielded from all ultra-violet rays excepting those which passed through the solution in the quartz beaker. In order to fully expose all of the organisms and to standardize the depth of suspension, a paraffine mould was made in the Syracuse dish by holding a No. 3 rubber stopper in the center of the dish and pouring melted paraffine around it. On cooling, the stopper was withdrawn, leaving a depression 20 mm. in diameter in which 0.5 c.c. of paramecium suspension was placed.

Somewhat over 100 exposures were made, using this method with the following results:

AVERAGE EXTERMINATION PERIODS

(Paramecia not immersed in Test Solution)

We may infer that solutions of gelatine, peptone, amino-benzoic acid, cystin, tyrosin and leucin detoxicate ultra-violet rays which pass through them, while solutions of the other substances investigated do not appreciably do so. The protective action of tyrosin in alkaline solutions is exceptionally marked, and in this connection it is of especial interest to note that Kober has found that an alkaline reaction markedly increases the absorption of ultraviolet rays by tyrosin solutions.

The protective action of leucin, which does not exhibit a selective absorption in the ultraviolet, is at first sight somewhat puzzling. It was noticed, however, that both tyrosin and leucin solutions underwent a change of color upon continued exposure to the ultra-violet light. This change was especially marked in the leucin solutions resulting after 40 minutes exposure in closed quartz vessels in the production of a dark brown fluid having a distinctly intensified odor. This solution had a much greater protective power when tested in the above manner than leucin solutions which had not been previously exposed to the light. We may infer that ultra-violet light induces chemical changes in a leucin solution resulting in the production of substances having an enhanced power of absorbing ultra-violet rays.

Our results are therefore decidedly in harmony with the view that the susceptibility of protoplasm to ultra-violet light is conditioned by the selective absorption of the toxic rays by the aromatic amino-acid radicals of the proteins.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

F. I. HARRIS, H. S. HOYT

THE OUTLOOK IN CHEMISTRY IN THE UNITED STATES1

IT is the highest privilege of the president of the American Chemical Society to express to you, citizens of Boston, the society's deep appreciation of your interest in our science and of your courtesy in providing entertainment for our numerous membership. In token of the reality of this appreciation, no less than in recognition of the honor bestowed upon me by you, my fellow members in the society, it is my pleasant duty to address you on some subject which might interest you as an important phase of chemistry or which might bring home to you as thoughtful citizens of this great country of ours some of the important functions which our science may be expected to fulfil in the life of the nation. It is the president's happy privilege also to select his own subject. In normal times, I confess, I should have enjoyed the pleasure the scientific man finds in riding his own hobby before a large and friendly public and I should have been tempted to try to present to you some phase of those wonderfully intricate worlds of atoms and molecules and of the forces controlling them, on which the peculiar power of our science rests. But the spirit of complete preoccupation in the great test to which our country is being put, which I know pervades the minds and souls of all of you, has led me rather to the choice of a subject of more immediate relation to our present situation. I have thought you might be interested in a discussion of the outlook in

1 President's address delivered before the American Chemical Society, September 12, 1917, at Boston.

chemistry in the United States, with special reference to the resources of chemistry in the nation's service in war and in peace, as seen from the point of view both of chemical industry and of universities and colleges, the sources from which our chemists and our chemical lore are derived.

The great European war and now our own entry into the world struggle of free democracies against the organized military power of the last strongholds of feudal privilege in western civilization have brought home to the public as never before in the history of the world the vital place which chemistry occupies in the life of nations. What is it, indeed, that is so fundamental in this science that a country's very existence in times of great emergencies and its prosperity at any time may depend on its master minds in chemistry? It is the fact, summed up in the fewest possible words, that chemistry is the science of the transformation of matter. Since every phase of our existence is bound up with matter, from our birth to our return to dust, we find at every turn in life that chemistry is in demand to aid man in his effort to assure to himself a safe, scientific control in the supplying of his own needs, where nature, from time immemorial, has shown the same impersonal indifference as to his wants, his survival or destruction, that she has for every other form of life! From the transformation of our raw ores into finished metals of almost any conceivable quality and application, to the transformation of rocks and salts and the gases of our atmosphere into nourishing foods, from the transformation of the yield of our peaceful cotton fields and rich coal deposits into death-dealing explosives, to the preparation of blessed life-saving medicaments from the same crude sources-to mention only a few instances of the transformation of matter that I have in mindit is chemistry that is giving us the power

to satisfy our needs, whether it be for wise and beneficent purposes or for the fulfilment of our more baneful desires.

The crisis of the war has put this great controlling science, as it has put all other human agencies, to the fire test in every great country on the face of the earth. Acknowledgedly, chemistry has thus far staved off defeat for Germany after Joffre on the Marne had killed her hopes for a swift, crushing victory through the violation of Belgium, and had taught her that she must face a long struggle, in which, cut off from the world's supplies, she must make shift with what her own territories could yield and her chemists could produce. In the wonderful organization of power in France and in England in the midst of war, the French and English chemists have stepped in and brought their supplies of munitions of every variety, of remedies, of their new weapons of defense and offense in poison gas and liquid fire warfare up to the point of meeting now on more than equal terms an enemy prepared years in advance. And in our country too our chemists have stood the ordeal of an unprecedented time. I have in mind our splendid achievement of having solved in these three years of warfare such tremendous problems which these years have brought to us as were involved in the speeding up of the production of thousands and thousands of tons of fundamental chemical products needed by our allies and now for our own purposes-steel and iron alloys of every variety of toughness, hardness or elasticity, purified copper by the millions of pounds, aluminium for airships and motor cars, abrasives on which the trueness of every great and every small gun depends, sulphuric acid and alcohol for the preparation of explosives-foods, oils and scores of other essential products prepared on a scale never seen before-I think we may say with justifiable pride that our

great basic chemical industries have successfully risen to the demands of a situation unparalleled in its scope and urgency. There have been times of delay and times of worry, but the few failures have been due rather to financial difficulties than to a breakdown in scientific efficiency. To those of us who know that the chemist is the final controlling mind, guiding in safety for the financier these vast undertakings and expansions, the record of these years is truly a wonderfully satisfactory response to the first crucial test of the efficiency of chemistry in America.

And this result justifies the faith that we will win out just as surely in the hundreds of newer problems brought to us by our own participation in the war. Some of these problems have been brought to the attention of our members by the chairman of the two chief chemistry committees, which are cooperating with the government-Dr. W. H. Nichols, chairman of the committee on chemistry of the National Defense Council, an industrial committee, and by Dr. M. T. Bogert, chairman of the chemistry committee of the National Research Council, a research committee. From San Francisco to Boston, from Minnesota to Texas, our chemists have shown the allpervading desire to bring to the immediate practical assistance of our country every ounce of our strength and every grain of our intelligence, and have stepped into line for service not only with splendid enthusiasm, but still better, with the grim determination of purposeful men, who know well our enemies' strength, but who will do our share to eliminate, effectively, unscrupulous militarism from the politics of the world! The immediate response to the tender of the services of our membership to the President of the United States and of the organization of the members for such service through a census of chemists has been an increase in our membership from

a total of some 8,000 to 10,500, an unprecedented growth, which shows unequivocally that the chemists of the United States are of one mind in ranging themselves on the side of organized, whole-hearted and forceful support of our government in this war! Indeed, one of our chief difficulties has been to restrain our men in their eagerness until proper organization would enable the central committees to designate to each man the field in which he could serve best. To the impatient chemists, waiting for their "marching orders" it may have appeared that invaluable time has been wasted and that progress even now is all too slow. But work on all the most important problems really was quickly organized and already important results are available. As an illustration of this fact we have the brilliant and speedy success of Dr. Day and his collaborators in producing optical glass, so much needed for range-finders, which will bring our shots home to the enemy.

The very nature of most of the problems makes it impossible to name them here, but I may say that improvements in explosives, multiplication of the sources of supply from which to manufacture explosives, including the utilization of the atmospheric nitrogen for the production of nitric acid, providing protection for our soldiers and sailors against poisonous gases, the making of chemicals for which we have hitherto been dependent on importations, these are some of the problems on which many of our ablest chemists have been working with all the power and concentration that the occasion demands. I may be more explicit in regard to the problem of the home manufacture of so-called synthetic remedies, for the supplies of which up to the present time we have turned to our present enemies. We need large supplies of salvarsan for our hospitals and for our armies, we need local anesthetics, substitutes for cocaine, for our surgeons,

we need safe hypnotics to insure blessed sleep to sufferers in home or hospital, we need a long list of products to relieve the numberless ailments to which man is subject. Many of the best of these products are protected by patents, but the Adamson law will make it possible for American manufacturers to prepare these remedies in this country. There is nothing wonderful about their preparation-the scientific skill and experience of American chemists is coping with them as easily as an expert chess-player solves his problem in chess and indeed with much the same kind of enjoyment. For instance, the obstacles in the way of the preparation of some drugs, most needed but prepared with considerable difficulty, such as salvarsan and atophan, have already been overcome in a way that leaves no doubt, if any ever existed, as to our ability to stand on our own feet, once Congress has removed the legal disabilities. University men and industrial firms have united in the vigorous attack on this problem.

This question brings me to another phase of my subject. Looking beyond the immediate future to the years ahead, why should we ever again be dependent on any foreign country for such fundamental needs of a nation as the best remedies for its stricken people-or, enlarging the question for such fundamental industrial needs as dyes and dozens of finer chemicals, the need of which has seriously handicapped manufacturers and to a certain extent is still interfering with normal activity? It has been publicly urged in Germany-I am quoting from an excellent article by our friend Dr. Baekeland-that German dye manufacturers after the war should allow only a limited and conditional quantity of dyes to go to foreign countries, including the United States, in order to give her home industries a great lead in

recovering the commerce of the world in textiles. Even if this suggestion should not be put into effect, for Germany has more to lose than to gain by a policy of trade-war after the reestablishment of peace, we may be sure that her own manufacturers will get the best of her supplies and every possible advantage. Our textile manufacturers and many other branches of industry will be at the mercy of competitors, assisted by government direction, unless we have a declaration of chemical independence in this country! Every thoughtful chemist, I am convinced, and I trust that every other thoughtful citizen, will acquiesce in the policy that henceforth in our basic needs, at least, we be independent of the friendship or enmity of foreign nations! And that conclusion brings me to one of the most important points in my discussion this evening: What are some of the main conditions, from a chemist's point of view, that must be fufilled, if we are to look forward to successful industrial and scientific development and independence, when the tremendous competition of peace must be met. These conditions are to be sought not only in the field of applied chemistry-and applied chemistry includes every great national industry, from agriculture to the manufacture of steel-but they involve also our universities, technical schools and colleges, the great sources from which our chemists come, not only equipped technically for their work, but carrying also the inspiration, the orientation, which will make or mar them and with them will make or mar that part of the nation's life which will be dependent on chemistry.

Turning first to the field of applied chemistry, I would like to emphasize that in my opinion the most important single factor which would lead to a tremendous increase in power in our industrial development is not immediately a question of